An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. ~Mahatma Gandhi
Enhancing the effects of dopamine, a chemical in the brain, influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.
The study, published in Current Biology, confirms an important role for dopamine in how human expectations are formed and how people make complex decisions. It also contributes to an understanding of how pleasure expectations can go wrong, for example in drug addiction.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter produced in several areas of the brain that is found in a wide variety of animals. Its role in reward learning and reward-seeking behavior is well established by animal research, though its role in humans is much less understood.